Connie sent over a chunk of smoked gouda a few days ago and it's been absolutely fantastic. While I've always been a fan of cheese, I didn't have a very discerning palate for most of my life. My cheese choice tended to mostly entail deciding if I wanted white or yellow American. This changed a little due to cheese platters. When you go to scientific conferences and talks/lectures, a cheese platter was not an unexpected sight. Since I had few cheese preferences or prejudices, I would more or less sample at random. It took years before I actually figured out that the one I liked best was even called smoked gouda.

What's not to love about smoked gouda? First of all, I'm a firm believer that anything tastes better smoked. This especially applies to anything savory but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if putting cotton candy in a smoker would yield a better product too. In addition, gouda has a mellow and creamy flavor, not at all offensive like some other cheese offerings and no unpleasant aftertaste. It's the king of cheese as far as I'm concerned.

When I was a kid, I had a cheese-related dream. I always had this idea of wanting to own a giant wheel of cheese. I read a lot of fantasy novels as a kid and in many of the books the characters would always have cheese wheels as part of their daily provisions. They would hack off a hunk of cheese, get some brown peasant bread, and that made a meal of it. It got so that in my mind, cheese wheels = adventure. Just as a Douglas Adams fan would never leave on an adventure without a towel, if you had asked a 12 year old me what I would bring, I can guarantee you a giant cheese wheel would have been on the list.

Current Mood: contemplative

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There's this crazy cheese rolling competition every year in a small English villiage. A wheel of cheese gets rolled down this really steep hill and people chase after it trying to catch it. Because of the steepness of the hill it's impossible to manage staying on your feet the entire time. It's pretty crazy!

I've seen these videos before and I don't understand how no one dies doing this. I know for a fact that even if I didn't die, I would suffer broken bones and unbelievable amounts of pain trying something like this.

My mom made homemade bread when I was growing up. I would often bring a hunk of bread and cheese to school for lunch. Usually after reading a book where the character in it did the same. It's so ironic you post this because I was just thinking about those memories yesterday.

I have. I don't like a lot of the aged crumbly cheeses. The aged creamy ones like blue cheese are just great but the hard ones just don't appeal to me very much. Connie had a whole buncha different Parmesans out during Thanksgiving and most were pretty noxious.